About this collection

The audio recordings in this collection are sociolinguistic interviews and conversations collected by USC professor emeritus Carmen Silva-Corvalán when she was in the Departments of Spanish and Portuguese and Linguistics.

The subcollections listed above cover ca. 348 hours of audio interviews collected from 1976 to 1992. The tapes from Covarrubias, Spain are 35 hours and were recorded from 1981 to 1982. The East Los Angeles, California, interviews of Mexican Americans cover 110 hours, collected from 1983-1984. About 48 hours are interviews with Mexican American children, collected in Los Angeles, California, from 1988-1992. The San Fernando Valley Mexican American adolescents interviews cover more than 21 hours, collected in 1976. The recordings of West Los Angeles Mexican Americans of various ages cover more than 41 hours, collected in 1978. The Santiago, Chile, interviews cover 93 hours and were collected from 36 Chileans of varying ages from 1978-1992.

These materials provide an authentic resource serving multiple research communities engaged in projects related to language education, linguistic research, bilingualism research, and technology development, specifically of Spanish spoken in Spain, Chile and Los Angeles. Financial support for the initial research came from the National Science Foundation and a USC Faculty Research grant. Digitization was supported by the Del Amo Fund (USC Dornsife College), the L.A. Murillo Hispanic Heritage Endowment (USC Libraries), and the Center for Research Libraries, Latin Americanist Research Resources Project (LARRP).